This is my first blog post (ever) and i hope to share my experiences out in the world of IT with you.

I am a firm believer that information on how to make our lives as IT support easier should be shared with other IT Pros out there. Kinda a big happy family idea really.

Anyway, here is my first blog/post on "A quick way to reboot a server with Exchange and AD installed"

---The background Story---

One of my first experiences with a server sitting at the "Windows is shutting down" screen for a long time just so happened to be one of my first experiences of restarting a server on a client site by myself. So you can understand why i was getting very nervous when this particular server had been sitting at this screen for over 5 minutes (nearing on 10 minutes, but feeling like hours!)

I called back to the office and asked one of the other techs if they had seen this problem before, they said "yeah, sometimes they take a long time to shutdown"

So i thought, no worries, its just life.

But then on the drive home, i got thinking, "Surely someone else has had the same problem, i wonder if they found a fix for it?"

Then the google'ing began....

---What I Found---

After a while of searching I came across a small batch file that Daniel Petri had created. Basically it is a simple batch file that shuts down all the exchange services and stops other dependant services before shutting down (or rebooting) the server.

I tried this next time I was out onsite to do a reboot of the server.

I was amazed at the results, the server was down and up again in under 5 minutes! "Wicked!" I thought "This is the answer to the sites where reboots take a long time."

However I have found that some sites the batch file makes little or no difference, it seems the biggest improvements are only on sites where it has always taken a long time to shutdown/reboot.

The script has also been incorperated into Microsoft's KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555526)

I downloaded the script from here: http://www.petri.co.il/slow_shutdown_of_exchange_2003_server_installed_on_dc.htm

But for convenience i will also paste it below (copy the text and save it as a .bat file)

I have been using this script for years now. And just today I shutdown my Exchange Server for the last time, after moving our accounts out to a hosted service...

Comment
by
Patrick, on 23-Sep-2009 15:52

Just wanted to know, I used it for the first time tonight -- worked like a charm. Considerably cut down on my systems reboot time.

Thanks!

Add a comment

Please note: comments that are inappropriate or promotional in nature will be deleted.
E-mail addresses are not displayed, but you must enter a valid e-mail address to confirm your comments.

Are you a registered Geekzone user? Login to have the fields below automatically filled in for you and to enable links in comments.
If you have (or qualify to have) a Geekzone Blog then your comment will be automatically confirmed and placed in the moderation queue for the blog owner's approval.

Your name:

Your e-mail:

Your webpage:

jaymz's profile

James
New Zealand

This blog is hosted by Geekzone. You can have a Geekzone Blog, free for non-commercial use, when you participate!
Report this post. Contents are property and copyright of the author, or licensed. Geekzone®